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Naspers chief executive Koos Bekker’s remuneration package, which is currently valued at more than R7-billion before tax for the past five years, has broken all previous pay records for JSE executives and is expected to hold the record for the foreseeable future.

Koos Bekker: Naspers Chief Executive

The 74 percent surge in the Naspers N share price over the past 12 months, combined with Bekker’s unique remuneration arrangement, has generated several billions of rands of potential profits for Bekker.

At a current price of R795, the 11.7 million shares that Bekker was awarded as remuneration for the five years to the end of March are worth R9.3bn. The cost to Bekker of the shares is just over R2bn.

This puts the value of his remuneration package significantly ahead of any other executive on the JSE, including executives of companies that have their primary listing on an international bourse.

Naspers’s annual report for financial 2013 reveals that 3.9 million shares were released to Bekker on March 31 this year and are being held in reserve for him in the company’s share incentive scheme. “This is the final tranche of his five-year contract entered into on April 1, 2008,” the Naspers remuneration report says.

In terms of his unique remuneration contract Bekker does not receive any salary, bonus, car scheme or medical or pension contributions from the company. Instead, in 2008 he was awarded 11.7 million shares, which vested in three annual tranches of 3.9 million at the end of years three, four and five.

The 11.7 million shares were awarded to Bekker at the ruling price at the beginning of his five-year contract, which was around R150. In addition, the price he has to pay is adjusted for inflation.

The first tranche, which was paid out at the end of financial 2011, cost Bekker R167 a share. The second tranche, at the end of financial 2012, cost Bekker R176 a share. The shares allocated to Bekker in March this year cost him R185 each.

This means that the total cost to Bekker for the 11.7 million shares was just over R2bn, compared with the current market value of those shares of R9.3bn. So, Bekker is currently showing a pretax profit of R7.2bn on his unique five-year remuneration package.

This is Bekker’s third five-year contract with Naspers.

In terms of the first contract, entered into in 1997, Bekker was allocated 3.3 million shares, which were released to him in three tranches ending in December 2003.

The dotcom collapse in 2001 highlighted the high-risk element of the arrangement and there was little value in the Naspers shares by the time they were awarded to Bekker.

In the second five-year contract, Bekker was allocated 4.4 million shares in 2003 at R21.40 a share. The shares were again released to Bekker in three tranches, with the price adjusted for inflation.

The steady upward trajectory of the share price during this five-year period meant that Bekker secured considerable profits.

The third contract, which has just expired, is by far the most valuable in terms of the number of shares awarded as well as the price appreciation.

The single most important factor in the surge in the Naspers share price in recent years is attributed to the performance of, and expectations for, China-based Tencent. Tencent is an acquisition that Bekker, who is regarded as having more guanxi (contacts) in China than most foreigners, championed back in 2004.

In addition to the 11.7 million shares, Bekker holds 4.7 million shares awarded to him in 2002 in terms of the rules of the Naspers share incentive trust. At the current share price, these 16.4 million shares are worth R13bn. The dividend payment on these shares will earn Bekker, and cost Naspers, R63 million a year.

Bekker appears to have sold the 7.7 million Naspers shares he was allocated in terms of the first two five-year contracts.

Supporters of Bekker’s remuneration contract argue that it is an appropriate arrangement given the critical entrepreneurial role he has played in building up the company.

Critics counter that the arrangement is unnecessarily generous and has contributed to the high-risk aspect of the share price.

The annual report does not indicate that Bekker has to hold onto the shares beyond the end of his five-year contract. They point to the fact that Naspers has a higher market capitalisation than Sasol, although its earnings-generating ability is significantly lower.

Remuneration consultants note that the arrangement has essentially de-linked Bekker from the group’s remuneration policies as set out by the remuneration committee. – IOL

And guess where Naspers’s investment arm, MIH Holdings Limited, is located? Yes, in the exact same street of this tax-haven of the (mostly) British elite. Just think about the above every time you pay a small fortune to watch M-Net, SuperSport, DSTV, et cetera.

Now, HSBC is the world’s 3rd largest bank with $2.36 trillion in assets. Formerly known as Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation, HSBC is one of the most unscrupulous banks ever. It has been the cash cow of the British elite since its inception as a repository for British Crown opium proceeds accrued during the Chinese Opium Wars.

Armed with a royal charter, Lord Shelbourne started the Chinese opium trade in 1783 with merchants from the East India Company. Shelbourne’s main spin-doctor was Adam Smith. The latter worked for the East India Company, which was formed from the slave-trading Levant Company and later became known as Chatham House. The latter is home to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), the second most influential think tank in the world.

The RIIA was founded in 1920. Its American sister institute, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), was founded one year later. Walther Lippmann, the Pulitzer-Prize essayist, journalist and mass-media genius was one of the founding members of the CFR. But more about him later. Needless to say, these two organizations, the RIIA and CFR, work hand in hand.

Now, the CFR is run by some of the best brains in America. They are truly exceptional people. They basically run the State Department, the CIA and are connected to nearly everybody that matters in the business and academia in America, and globally.

The CIA operates under the cover of various organizations when it comes to furthering America’s strategic and economic interests. The Ford Foundation is one of the main fronts of the CIA (i.e. the CFR).

In June 1985, this foundation hosted the first ever meeting between the ANC and the Broederbond (i.e. the NP).

The conference took place in Glen Cove, Long Island on June 1st. The main players were Professor JP De Lange (Head of the Broederbond) and ANC officials, Thabo Mbeki, Mac Maharaj and Seretse Choadi.

This meeting did not produce the results the CFR were hoping for. So they summoned the (economic) artillery, David Rockefeller.

Along with being a CFR director for 46 years, David Rockefeller served as chairman of the board from 1970-85 and was the organization’s honorary chairman till 2001. During this time, he was also chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank.

On 31st July 1985, Chase Manhattan decided not to roll over South Africa’s debt. Apparently Pik Botha’s traitor heart nearly stopped beating: “I will never forget the night of July 31 when [Minister of Finance] Barend du Plessis phoned me … [He said]: ‘Pik, I must tell you that the country is facing inevitable bankruptcy … The process has started.’” (source).

The rest is history.

So what has this got to do with Naspers? Well, it just shows that Naspers is just another appendage of interest groups beyond the borders of South Africa. In other words, it does not serve the interests of South Africans. But then, neither do other media giants in South Africa.

Caxton/CTP’s chairman in the early 1990s was Van Zyl Slabbert, who also became the chairman of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Slabbert was the useful idiot of CFR member George Soros. The latter, through his Open Society Foundation, sponsored Slabbert and super-useful idiot Max Du Preez… especially with his anti-Afrikaner Vrye Weekblad newspaper.

So, every time you hear about the Davos Afrikaner called Koos Bekker, the big boss of the 33rd largest media company in the world called Naspers (worth R344 billion or $34,88 billion) just know that he is just another witting puppet on an Anglo-American string.

He is just like those rich Boer farmers who became hensoppers during the Anglo-Boer War… selling out their own people purely for profit. Nothing more, nothing less.

Meaning that the “Who is Naspers?” question is not really that interesting. The really interesting question is the “why” behind Naspers.

It is a fact that people can only make sense of Reality through “ideal meanings”. Those ideal “pictures in your head” prevent you, more often than not, to “… come to judgment by critical thinking” (Walther Lippmann).

Journalism is “intelligence work” and journalists are a link between policymakers and the public, according to Lippmann.

Meaning that journalists (and the media companies that employ them, e.g. Naspers) always sanitize the Truth at the behest of their pay-masters…

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STOCKHOLM, Sweden – As former South Africa President Nelson Mandela remains hospitalized and reportedly in serious condition, questions about the future of increasingly marginalized European-descent South Africans are edging into international headlines.

Nelson Mandela

Recent developments on multiple fronts are striking fear into the hearts of many Afrikaners, descendants of primarily northern Europeans who began arriving in South Africa three to four centuries ago.

From legally mandated race-based economic discrimination against whites to the thousands of farm murders targeting Boers across the nation, the problems are only getting worse. Poverty and unrest are spreading quickly as well.

Genocide

The world’s most prominent expert on genocide, President Dr. Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch, already warned last year that the Afrikaner population could be on the verge of a government-linked extermination campaign.

During a fact-finding mission to South Africa, Stanton, who helped fight against apartheid, found evidence implicating the ruling African National Congress (ANC)-South African Communist Party (SACP) government in a plot to eradicate whites as part of a scheme to foist Marxist tyranny on the nation.

In fact, after the investigation, WND reported that Genocide Watch raised its alert level on South Africa to stage 6 out of 8 – the planning and preparation phase of the extermination process.

“There is thus strong circumstantial evidence of government support for the campaign of forced displacement and atrocities against white farmers and their families,” Stanton said in the Genocide Watch report, adding that the end goal was communist tyranny. “There is direct evidence of [South African] government incitement to genocide.”

As WND also reported, South African President Jacob Zuma routinely sings racist songs calling for the murder of whites.

Former ANC Youth Leader Julius Malema, a virulently racist self-styled communist with a significant following, is now forming a new political party to “fight white males,” South African media reported this week.

Malema’s alliance will also seek to expropriate white-owned property without compensation, nationalize key industries and force whites to “behave in a manner that says they regret their conduct.”

Economic discrimination

Meanwhile, on the economic front, authorities are cracking down on the white minority as well.

Through a controversial program known as Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), the government has instituted a race-based employment regime specifically targeting whites.

Critics, even among prominent blacks, say the results of BEE have been disastrous.

Among the myriad problems associated with the race-based employment system: mass emigration of skilled workers contributing to “brain drain,” soaring poverty rates among whites, chaos for businesses and more.

Hundreds of thousands of economically excluded Afrikaners now live in squalid squatter camps throughout South Africa without so much as running water or electricity.

Hundreds of thousands more have fled to Western nations seeking a better life.

Among those groups, he said, are European-descent South Africans from virtually every economic field – especially people with cultural skills, bank workers, and government employees.

“Some of these people have definitely ended up on skid row,” Roodt added, pointing to the racist affirmative action policies as the cause.

“I definitely blame the system of reverse discrimination or anti-white racism for white poverty,” the author and prominent activist continued.

“Almost all whites are educated, literate and generally hard-working, so they should not be poor,” he said. “The system makes them poor by denying them opportunities and expecting whites to be superhuman and to make money out of thin air.”

Roodt explained that once people are excluded from the economic life of a country, they “spiral downwards and lose everything,” making it increasingly difficult to re-enter society in the future.

“It makes me both sad and very angry to witness these scenes of whites living in third-world squalor while we have all the skills to employ them, but the system prevents us from doing so,” he added.

The corruption is out of control, too, Roodt explained, saying it was contributing to the growing economic problems facing the nation.

“South Africa’s ANC government is so corrupt that it is sometimes hard to distinguish between the ruling party and organized crime,” he said.

Media attention

Since the fall of apartheid in 1994 – when the Western establishment and Soviet powers finally succeeded in forcing the anti-communist, white-dominated government to relinquish power – the international press, which played a key role in the process, has been largely silent.

After almost two decades of ignoring the issues, however, the world media is starting to take notice – albeit slowly.

The British state-funded BBC, for example, featured a recent article headlined “Do white people have a future in South Africa?”

“The answer, as with so many similar existential questions, is ‘Yes – but…’,” reported BBC News World Affairs Editor John Simpson after exploring the problems.

While acknowledging that whites still own much of the nation’s wealth, Simpson concluded that only certain segments of the European minority have a genuine future in South Africa.

“Working-class white people, most of them Afrikaans-speakers, are going through an intense crisis,” the BBC noted.

“Those who fit in and succeed will certainly have a future,” the report stated. “As for the rest, there are no guarantees whatsoever.”

ANC reaction

A spokesman for the ANC could not be reached for comment by WND despite repeated attempts.

However, even though many experts said the BBC article barely scratched the surface, the reaction from the ruling ANC was to demonize the reporter and his employer, saying the BBC was suffering from an “apartheid hangover.”

“South Africa has never been in a situation where whites have been singled out and persecuted,” ANC spokesperson Keith Khoza was quoted as saying in South African media reports.

He also pointed out that crime and poverty affect all South Africans, which is true, though few dispute the fact that white farmers have been victimized in numbers all out of proportion even when compared with the rest of South Africa’s crime-ridden society.

“The BBC is living in their own world with their racist tendencies where they wish to undermine the government of South Africa because it is largely a black government,” the spokesman claimed.

“This isn’t just an attack on the government of South Africa and the ANC, it’s an attack on South Africa as a whole,” he concluded.

Farm murders

In a development that was considered surprising by analysts and South African exiles who spoke with WND, the BBC also touched on the ongoing farm murders that have claimed as many as 10 percent of the nation’s European-descent farmers.

“Virtually every week the press here report the murders of white farmers, though you will not hear much about it in the media outside South Africa,” the report said. “In South Africa you are twice as likely to be murdered if you are a white farmer than if you are a police officer – and the police here have a particularly dangerous life. The killings of farmers are often particularly brutal.”

As WND also reported last year, authorities have done little about the problem other than try to conceal it from the world.

“The government has so far been unwilling to make solving and preventing these murders a priority,” the BBC report continued.

Indeed, even keeping an accurate count has been made all-but impossible by the ANC-SACP government, which regularly downplays the vicious farm murders and even stopped tracking useful statistics that would reveal the true scope of the problem.

Many of the victims, often children and babies, are brutally tortured before being killed.

The horrors have included drowning infants in boiling water, raping children, disemboweling whole families, dragging victims for miles behind a vehicle and other unimaginable atrocities.

Experts say the goal is to terrorize and eventually eliminate white farmers, with Genocide Watch’s Stanton and numerous other convinced that the ultimate aim is to establish communist tyranny.

With a population of around 5 million, whites today make up less than 10 percent of the population, down from above 20 percent a century ago.

Since the fall of apartheid in 1994, an estimated half-a-million have emigrated. Countless more would go if they could.

Land redistribution

In a separate BBC report, the state-funded news organization also documented the results of the South African government’s highly controversial land-redistribution policies.

The government admitted that 90 percent of farms it had “redistributed” from whites who farmed the land for generations to blacks with little knowledge of farming – almost 25,000 square miles of land so far – are now “failing.”

“The farms – which were active accruing revenue for the state – were handed over to people, and more than 90 percent of those are not functional,” Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti conceded.

“They are not productive, and therefore the state loses the revenue,” Nkwinti continued. “We cannot afford to go on like that… No country can afford that.”

While the government plan was to redistribute a full third of white-owned land to blacks by 2014, there are now discussions about potentially trying to return some of the farms to their former owners in a bid to keep the tax revenues flowing.

In neighboring Zimbabwe, formerly known as Rhodesia, Marxist dictator and ANC ally Robert Mugabe violently expelled much of the population of white farmers. The land was then largely “redistributed” to cronies who knew nothing about farming.

Before that, the country was known as the “breadbasket” of Africa thanks to its massive agricultural export industry.

Today, Zimbabweans are starving as the nation increasingly depends on international food aid for survival.

Future in South Africa

Analysts on all sides of the issue seem to agree on at least one point: The eventual death of Mandela, 94, could make long-simmering problems explode to the forefront once again, potentially with deadly consequences.

The general public perception of Mandela, which tends to ignore or minimize his well-documented past involvement in terrorism and the international communist movement, considers the former president and ANC leader as something of a hero for his key role in the Western- and Soviet-backed takedown of apartheid.

When he dies, more than a few analysts say full-blown chaos could be unleashed in South Africa. One source with knowledge of the matter told WND that martial law may even be declared.

If the plight of significant segments of the Afrikaner population is bad now, however, the death of Mandela could mark a turning point toward total disaster – at least if current trends continue and the world remains silent.

What to do, though, remains unclear.

Afrikaners within South Africa and others exiled around the world have widely divergent views as to what route would be best for the European-descent minority.

Options

A few exiles, citizens and experts who spoke with WND suggested that there was no longer a viable future for Afrikaners in South Africa.

Along with advocates like Stanton of Genocide Watch, they say it is time for the United States and Europe to start urgently accepting vulnerable whites as refugees.

Others say a war for self-defense might be the only real option if the situation gets out of control – a conflict that would undoubtedly have disastrous consequences for all South Africans, but especially the white minority.

Plenty of South Africans, especially in cities like Cape Town, still do not see what analysts say are storm clouds building on the horizon. Most would simply like to live in peace.

Incompatible cultures

For an increasingly significant segment of the population, it is becoming clearer that today’s South Africa is simply not sustainable in the long term.

“South Africa is a colonial construct, currently an incompatible, unsustainable mix,” International Afrikaner Society President Hannes Louw told WND.

The major fault-line in what is dubbed the “Rainbow nation,” Louw said, is between Afrikaners – descendants of Europeans, Khoi Africans as well as former slaves from Africa, Indonesia, and India – and Bantu, descendants of migrant groups from central and eastern Africa.

“The time has come to face the facts: oil and water does not mix,” he continued.

“The same principles that applied to other countries, like North and South Sudan, also applies to South Africa – the country needs to be divided in two countries, a Western South Africa where Afrikaners are the majority and an Eastern South Africa where Bantus are the majority,” Louw said.

“Despite the current regime’s efforts to culturally colonize Western South Africa, with racist Black Economic Empowerment and busing in homeless Xhosa, Afrikaners are still the majority in in this region and that’s the saving grace,” he continued.

“The time has come for Afrikaners living in Western South Africa to democratically take back their inheritance, the land that was paid for with the lives of our ancestors, fertilized with their blood and watered with their tears,” Louw added. “But as Christians, let us not forget to do so responsibly in line with Biblical principles, international law and the South African constitution.”

Afrikaner homeland

PRAAG leader Roodt, meanwhile, says the European minority in South Africa must achieve self-determination and self-governance if the Afrikaner people and culture are going to survive and thrive.

“The sooner whites realize that the only way out is an ethnic state or Israel of their own, the better,” he told WND. “I can only see the system deteriorating progressively, with anti-white discrimination becoming so pervasive and pernicious that no one will be able to survive.”

Experts say the idea of an independent homeland for Afrikaners is a non-starter with the South African ANC-SACP government, Western powers, and the United Nations.

Still, among certain segments of the white minority in South Africa, the idea is alluring and will likely become increasingly appealing going forward.

Survival

Henri Le Riche, a patriotic Afrikaner activist in exile in Australia who runs a website focused on many of issues affecting South Africa, told WND that there could still be a bright future for his people in their homeland.

“The Afrikaner is a small minority, and unlike the U.S. don’t have numbers in the population which will help in long term survival,” he explained.

That does not mean, though, that anyone should lose hope. There is potential, Le Riche continued.

“Whites do have a future in South Africa, but only if they embrace their own culture and stop feeling shame or embarrassed,” he said. “This, of course, is not easy in the current atmosphere, as morale is at its lowest due to affirmative action favoring black people, and discriminating against skilled white people.”

Revival and the West

However, Le Riche sees the problem as something that goes beyond his own nation and really affects the West more broadly – particularly Americans, who he says have a lot in common with the Afrikaner.

There are two primary forces holding Western culture together, Le Riche said: family and religion.

“This is the focus point of Marxism in to break down these two pillars of our society, with the final goal to break down Western culture,” he explained. “We can see the effects of this Marxist strategy all over the world with moral decay in society and the breakup of families.”

Quoting an American, Le Riche said that the West may have defeated Communism during the Cold War, but Marxism is still winning. Communism, he added, is the structured form of Marxism – government.

Afrikaners and Americans

Le Riche offered two suggested ways for Afrikaners as a people to survive, which he believes apply to patriotic Americans as well.

For one, “do not feel guilty or shy about who or what you are,” he said.

“As humans we have good and bad points, and that goes for every nation on this earth’s history. Marxism focus on breaking down identity by form of making you feel ashamed of who you are, and your history.”

Secondly, Le Riche added, Afrikaners should reach out to Americans, and vice versa.

“As Afrikaners and Americans we have a very similar history spanning over a period of nearly 400 years on two different continents,” he said. “The nearest you will get to an American is an Afrikaner. No other nation comes as close.”

“Sadly, many Americans don’t even know the Afrikaner,” Le Riche continued. “Americans need to help Afrikaners selling themselves, selling their identity. Fight the goal of Marxism.”

He says Americans should look beyond “Fortress America” and build new friendships and re-connect with old allies like the Afrikaners.

“When it comes to our way of life and survival of our values in the long run, we need friends, many friends, and friendships, like relationships, need work,” the exiled activist and commentator said. “Let’s start building those relationships.”

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South Africa’s real gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 0,9% in the first quarter of 2013, Statistics South Africa said on Tuesday.

The increase in GDP was lower than the 2,1% achieved in the fourth quarter of 2012. However, when compared to the first quarter of 2012, the GDP increased by 1,9%.

Main contributors to the increase in economic activity in the first quarter of 2013 were the mining and quarrying industries, finance, real estate and business services, which each contributed 0,7 of a percentage point.

General government services contributed 0,3 of a percentage, while wholesale, retail, motor trade, catering, accommodation, transport, storage and communications each contributed 0,2 of a percentage point.

Sectors which experienced declines were manufacturing at -1,2%, while the agriculture, forestry, fishing, electricity, gas and water industries each contributed -0.1 of a percentage point.

Nominal GDP at market prices in the first quarter of 2013 was R814bn, which was R1bn less than the fourth quarter of 2012. Finance, real estate and business services expanded by R7bn to R161bn in the first quarter of 2013.

Agriculture, forestry and fishing expanded by R4bn to R14bn, while the construction sector grew by R4bn to R31bn. Wholesale, retail and motor trade, catering and accommodation decreased by R15bn to R115bn.

The transport, storage and communications sector declined by R5bn to R63bn. Mining and quarrying decreased by R3bn to R63bn. — Sapa

BRICS, originally “BRIC” before the inclusion of South Africa in 2010, is the title of an association of emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. With the possible exception of Russia, the BRICS members are all developing or newly industrialised countries, but they are distinguished by their large, fast-growing economies and significant influence on regional and global affairs. As of 2013, the five BRICS countries represent almost 3 billion people, with a combined nominal GDP of US$14.8 trillion, and an estimated US$4 trillion in combined foreign reserves. Presently, South Africa holds the chair of the BRICS group.

In 2012, Hu Jintao, who at the time was President of China, described the BRICS countries as defenders and promoters of developing countries and a force for world peace. However, some analysts have highlighted potential divisions and weaknesses in the grouping, such as India and China’s disagreements over territorial issues, slowing economic growth rates, and disputes between the members over UN Security Council reform. India’s foreign policy in regards to BRICS is also heavily criticized by analysts in USINPAC.

History

The foreign ministers of the initial four BRIC states (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) met in New York City in September 2006, beginning a series of high-level meetings. A full-scale diplomatic meeting was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on May 16, 2008.

First BRIC summit

The BRIC grouping’s first formal summit commenced in Yekaterinburg on June 16, 2009, with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Dmitry Medvedev, Manmohan Singh, and Hu Jintao, the respective leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China, all attending. The summit’s focus was on means of improving the global economic situation and reforming financial institutions, and discussed how the four countries could better co-operate in the future. There was further discussion of ways that developing countries, such as the BRIC members, could become more involved in global affairs.

In the aftermath of the Yekaterinburg summit, the BRIC nations announced the need for a new global reserve currency, which would have to be ‘diversified, stable and predictable’. Although the statement that was released did not directly criticise the perceived ‘dominance’ of the US dollar – something that Russia had criticised in the past – it did spark a fall in the value of the dollar against other major currencies.

Entry of South Africa

In 2010, South Africa began efforts to join the BRIC grouping, and the process for its formal admission began in August of that year. South Africa officially became a member nation on December 24, 2010, after being formally invited by the BRIC countries to join the group. The group was renamed BRICS – with the “S” standing for South Africa – to reflect the group’s expanded membership. In April 2011, the President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, attended the 2011 BRICS summit in Sanya, China, as a full member.

Developments

The BRICS Forum, an independent international organisation encouraging commercial, political and cultural cooperation between the BRICS nations, was formed in 2011. In June 2012, the BRICS nations pledged $75 billion to boost the lending power of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, this loan was conditional on IMF voting reforms. In late March 2013, during the fifth BRICS summit in Durban, South Africa, the member countries agreed to create a global financial institution which would rival the western-dominated IMF.

Summits

The grouping has held annual summits since 2009, with member countries taking turns to host. Prior to South Africa’s admission, two BRIC summits were held, in 2009 and 2010. The first five-member BRICS summit was held in 2011. The most recent BRICS summit took place in Durban, South Africa, in March 2013.

Like this:

These are very well-organised ‘flashmob’ events in which black foreigner’s shops are targetted, looted and people chased out of the townships…

In black-ruled South Africa – where many millions of foreign black Africans migrated to since 1994 – local black South Africans say they are increasingly ‘fed-up’ with “foreign blacks taking their jobs and their women”. Since 2008, there have been increasing outbreaks of xenophobic violence which have resulted in often very gruesome murders of foreign blacks. often in vicious mob-violence.

Due to migration from the rest of the continent, South Africa’s population has soared from 21-million to 51-million over the past twenty years: according to the government’s Statistics-South Africa agency.

It appears as if these organised attacks are again breaking out in May 2013 – it has already starting in the overcrowded townships around Vereeniging, such as Sebokeng and elsewhere.

These are very well-organised ‘flashmob’ events in which black foreigner’s shops are targetted, looted and people chased out of the townships.

The latest attack occurred at Diepsloot near Johannesburg this past weekend and elsewhere in Gauteng province; in Mayfair Johannesburg: and in Boksburg: Last year’s violence was equally ferocious, with black foreigners killed in xenophobic mob-violence in Pietermaritzburg on 25 June 2012, when Ali Mkhuluziza of Burundi and Aiwalie Saineti of Malawi were murdered in Mpumelelo township’s ‘France’ squatter camp. In 2012, at least 86 incidents of’xenophobia’ were recorded: including the gruesome triple-murders of a defenceless Chinese shopkeeper Long Liang Chen 31, his young wife and baby girl in their shop in Warden, Free State on Sept 16 2012. The South African police hesitates to refer to such racist attacks against black foreigners as ‘xenophobia’, preferring to refer to such gruesome violence as ‘common crime’.

However – In the latest incidents in the Gauteng province’s most overcrowded townships such as Diepsloot and Sebokeng, the black South African community held a meeting a month earlier to discuss strategies. People decided to chase out ‘all the black foreigners’. Now the violence has flaring up in well-organised attacks against shops and spaza’s owned by foreign blacks. The attacks are motivated both by greed for loot – but also by hatred towards the black foreigners. Reportedly, the ‘flash-mobs’ are organised via cellphones.

At Diepsloot Johannesburg this past weekend, foreign shop owners in Diepsloot had fled to a local car wash and were under guard by the SA police – following looting at their businesses on Sunday evening, May 26 2013. An Ethiopian man was quoted by Eyewitness News as saying on Monday that owned a grocery shop in Extention One of the township – but feared it would be targeted and was there so that police could protect him.

“It looks like separation,’ he told Eyewitness News. ” The people do not rob locally-owned shops but only want to rob shops owned by foreigners.”

Residents of Diepsloot said the killing of two Zimbabwean nationals and widespread looting of foreign shops on Sunday night were the result of frustrations over unemployment and poverty. The two Zimbabwean men were allegedly shot dead by a Somalian shopkeeper after he’d claimed they had tried to rob his spaza shop. Black South African residents reportedly responded to this shooting by damaging the Somalian’s shop and looting it overnight.

An eyewitness said after the shooting residents turned their anger to all thje foreigners living in the area and threatened to burn down their shops. “There were many people surrounding his shop. Others were screaming and shouting that they would burn the shop.” A small group of people gathered at the scene while police cleared the roads of burning tyres and rubbish from the protest. They were later dispersed by authorities.

The police’s Lungelo Dlamini said, “Members of our Tactical Response Team were on the scene and dispersed the crowd. We will monitor the situation and see what happens but the police will be in the area to make sure the place is safe.”

At the same time Diepsloot residents said on Monday xenophobia was still rife in their community. The informal settlement saw violent xenophobic attacks claim the lives of several foreign nationals in 2008. Five years after xenophobic violence claimed numerous lives in Diepsloot, resident Alpheas Daphazi said he still did not feel safe.

“They say go back home and remove Mugabe. What are you doing in our country? Why are taking our jobs? Why are you taking our women?” Daphazi was forced to move to Diepsloot in 2007 after violence in his country Zimbabwe became too much to handle. He told Eyewitness News in Johannesburg that foreigners in the community face a daily onslaught of insults from the community. With elections due to take place in Zimbabwe later this year, Daphazi said he would like to return home to cast his vote so he can escape the abuse of the Diepsloot community.

Like this:

The BBC wrote a report asking: “Do white people have a future in South Africa?”

Working-class white people, most of them Afrikaans-speakers, are going through an intense crisis. But you will not read about it in the newspapers or see it reported on television…

BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson examines the challenges facing white South Africans.

The report generally takes a liberal ‘all whites are complicit in South Africa’s misery’ tack, and sandwiches various incontrovertible facts about whites in South Africa between such language.

With those bits excised, we get:

The people who are suffering now are the weakest and most vulnerable members of the white community.

Ernst Roets, a leading Afrikaans campaigner from the AfriForum organisation, took me to a squatter camp outside the country’s capital, Pretoria. A white squatter camp.

It has been set up on the property of a sympathetic white farmer and is called, optimistically, Sonskyn Hoekie – Sunshine Corner.

There are broken-down cars and bits of discarded furniture everywhere. Beyond the wooden shacks lie ditches and pools of dirty, stagnant water where mosquitoes breed. Two basic toilets serve the whole camp.

According to Roets there are 80 white squatter camps – many of them bigger than this – in the Pretoria area alone. Across South Africa as a whole he believes there could be as many as 400,000 poor whites in conditions like these.

Sonskyn Hoekie has no water and no electricity. The inhabitants live on two hand-out meals of maize porridge a day, which is provided by local volunteers. There is no social security for them, no lifeline…

Semi-skilled white people have little chance of getting a job when so many black South Africans are unemployed.

Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policies, the South African version of Affirmative Action, have closed job markets to white South Africans. Racial benchmarks have been incorporated into private industry and government service. As a result, Black South Africans with a higher education are 34% more likely to find a job than white South Africans with that same level of education. And even that education is becoming hard to come by as white students with excellent grades are being shut out of higher education and given few options besides a refugee camp or immigration to one of the few countries that will have them.

Towards the end of the BBC article, the writer acknowledges the post-apartheid genocide of whites in the country:

There is another group of white Afrikaners, far higher up the social scale, who are deeply threatened – in this case, literally. Virtually every week the press here report the murders of white farmers, though you will not hear much about it in the media outside South Africa.

In South Africa you are twice as likely to be murdered if you are a white farmer than if you are a police officer – and the police here have a particularly dangerous life. The killings of farmers are often particularly brutal.

Ernst Roets’s organisation has published the names of more than 2,000 people who have died over the last two decades. The government has so far been unwilling to make solving and preventing these murders a priority.

2,000 targeted, murdered whites (murdered at four times the rate of rural black South Africans) is a low-ball figure. To see the horrific nature of these attacks, see here[Warning: graphic photos].

Meanwhile, these persecuted white families, many of whose lineage in South Africa goes back to the 1600s, are regularly being denied political asylum in western countries. And what sorts of Western voices are chiming in on the issue?

…Professor Mark Behr, of Rhodes College, in Memphis, Tennessee, and Dr Dennis Laumann, of the University of Memphis, have rejected requests that they help the family.

“I am not interested in assisting Afrikaners claiming discrimination in a non-racial, democratic, post-apartheid South Africa,” wrote Laumann.

“In my scholarly opinion, there is absolutely no basis for their allegation – whatever evidence they may present.”

Behr – who is an award-winning South African author – said he did not believe the law firm would find “any fair-minded scholar” to support the family.

Maybe if, on their immigration request forms, the white families said they were Muslim or non-white, they would improve their chances for successful asylum.

Dr. Stanton of Genocide Watch, a respected human rights organization, has stated that the white population of South Africa is now in the sixth of the center’s eight stages of genocide. That sixth stage is defined as “Preparation.”

“Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. Members of victim groups are forced to wear identifying symbols. Their property is expropriated. They are often segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved. At this stage, a Genocide Emergency must be declared.”

At the height of a crisis, when perceptions are sharply polarised, people aren’t prepared to question their pre-conceptions. They only see the “evidence” that supports their prejudices.

The recent “farm strikes” that shook the Western Cape for most of December and January (with a short Christmas break) was a case in point.

Let’s look at what really happened, not because the crisis is behind us, but because we are in a lull between storms. By all accounts, Mr Noseyman (Nosey) Pieterse, who emerged as a key figure behind the “strikes”, is mobilising for the next round of the “rural struggle” he claims to lead. Mr Pieterse wears several hats. He is simultaneously a farmer, the President of an association of BEE farmers in the wine and spirit industry, as well as a trade union leader, organising workers in the industry.

We should, in the weeks ahead, be prepared for the possibility of further rural “strikes”. In this context, it would help to have a better understanding of the crisis from which we have just emerged.

Before I begin, let me be clear: the life of a seasonal farm labourer is a very difficult one. Thousands of poverty stricken people come to the Western Cape from across Southern Africa (particularly Zimbabwe, Lesotho and the Eastern Cape) for the fruit-picking season, desperately seeking work in one of the few remaining sectors that employ unskilled labour. Many of these migrants have remained in the Province permanently and have set up “home” in shack settlements on the outskirts of rural towns. Unemployed for most of the year, they rely on the short fruit-picking season to earn some income, much of which disappears immediately into the coffers of loan sharks on whom they depend to keep their families alive. And as growing numbers of desperate work-seekers arrive, the competition intensifies between them for the shrinking number of jobs available, a result of the consolidation of farms and escalating mechanisation. As tough as it is to survive on the daily minimum wage, it is far tougher to earn nothing at all. And, as happens world-wide in situations of conflict over scarce resources, individuals band together in groups to protect and advance their interests. In divided societies, the fault line between groups is often determined by ethnicity. Here there are four distinct groups of seasonal work-seekers on the Province’s deciduous fruit and grape farms: Zimbabweans, Basotho, amaXhosa and traditional Western Cape farm workers, who would (in terms of the old apartheid designations) have been classified Coloured.

This is fertile ground for exploitation. And so it is easy to see how the dominant (but entirely misleading) narrative arose: “heartless white farmers and labour brokers make ‘super profits’ by using ‘divide-and-rule’ tactics to drive down workers’ wages as their lives deteriorate”.

It is easy to see how this narrative fuelled the anger and rage that led to the destruction of tens of millions of Rands worth of farm infrastructure (packing sheds, cooling stores, tractors, orchards and vineyards) in an orgy of violence lasting several weeks.

And one can discern the ANC’s interest in fuelling this narrative. It was a golden opportunity to drive a wedge between two strong sectors of DA support — farmers and farm workers – while seeking to position the DA on the side of “heartless farmers” and the ANC as the “champion of exploited workers”.

Unsurprisingly, this narrative was parroted by many observers, reinforcing stereotypes and creating conditions conducive to disinvestment and job losses in a sector that is the backbone of the Western Cape’s economy.

Except that the truth was the exact opposite.

I have rarely come across a case study that so graphically illustrates the disjuncture between perception and reality.

Some of the key facts (that explode this narrative) are as follows:

The workers’ protests started on a farm called Keurboschkloof, previously a model farm in the Western Cape where workers were paid far above the minimum wage. When the farmer, Pierre Smit, died, his farm was taken over by a Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) consortium that immediately CUT WORKERS’ WAGES from an average of R14.51 to R10.60 per hour.

This, understandably, elicited protests by workers, further aggravated by the fact that a former ANC Councillor, who is also a labour broker, tried to bring in “scab labour” at the behest of this BEE consortium to replace the protesting workers.

He was challenged by Nosey Pieterse, a rival unionist, who claimed sole right to organise workers in the area.

When the protests spread to the Royal Mushroom Farm and Normandy Farm in mid-October, I was tipped off about an ANC strategy to “bring Marikana to the farms of the Western Cape” – a phrase used repeatedly by the ANC, and particularly Tony Ehrenreich, who combines a role as COSATU provincial general secretary and the ANC caucus leader in the City of Cape Town.

And as the protests spread, ANC Western Cape Leader Marius Fransman made his presence felt, announcing “die Boere gaan k.k”, while the Minister of Agriculture, Tina Joemat-Petterrson also visited the area and used inflammatory language.

But the one Minister actually responsible for labour matters, Mildred Oliphant, remained abroad for weeks, and did not bother to cut her trip short despite the protest against the minimum wage SHE HAD SET. All the while, the ANC sought to blame the farmers.

So the truth is exactly the opposite of the prevailing narrative

In fact, the best option available for unskilled, seasonal farm workers in South Africa is to secure a job with a farmer like Pierre Smit, who is not a rare exception in the Western Cape. In fact, research by Ben Stanwix of UCT’s Development Policy Unit shows that on average farmers pay significantly higher wages in the Western Cape than other provinces. This is one of the reasons why tens of thousands of desperately poor people leave their homes in far more fertile regions across Southern Africa to seek work on the rocky mountain slopes of De Doorns and other farms in the Western Cape.

The truth also reveals a number of profound ironies

Irony number one:while the ANC was slamming “heartless white farmers”, many of them were actually paying their workers more than the minimum wage that had been set by the ANC Minister of Labour, Mildred Oliphant, in consultation with COSATU.

Irony number two:When the workers went on strike in protest, and the ANC was slamming labour brokers for playing a role in the exploitation of workers, a former ANC councillor, Nelie Barends, who is also a labour broker, tried to provide the BEE farming consortium that took over Keurboschkloof farm with scab labour. In fact, throughout the period that the ANC was slamming labour brokers’ in the Hex River Valley, their own members (including ANC councillor Pat Marran and his wife) were playing a key role as brokers supplying seasonal labour to farms.

Irony number three: as the ANC, Passop, FAWU and Nosey Pieterse claimed to be representing the interest of the workers they were actually at war with each other, a conflict which seriously jeopardised worker interests, causing serious divisions and infighting between different groups of workers, usually divided on an ethnic basis. But they all shared one common goal: to convince workers that their “war” was actually with the farmers. All the while, ANC politicians sought to spread the unrest across the province for their political advantage.

Irony number four: While the ANC accused farmers of fanning xenophobia, it has actually been driven by labour brokers representing differing groups of workers, and exploiting the fault lines caused by ANC policy. While Zimbabweans were legalised through a special amnesty of the Department of Home Affairs (with the support of the farmers), workers from Lesotho were excluded from the amnesty and their employment was deemed illegal and penalised through heavy fines. This meant that thousands of Basotho who had been previously employed, were now unemployed due to ANC policies, while the ANC sought to fan and exploit their anger to spread the unrest.

Irony number five: While the ANC claims to be against labour brokers, it was the farmers, together with the Zimbabwean workers who really fought to get rid of these broker intermediaries. The Zimbabweans, in particular, resisted a consortium or labour brokers (including those with ANC links) who sought to extract from farmers R10 per day for every worker the brokers placed in a job. Zimbabweans wanted to contract directly with farmers, without an intermediary role of labour brokers. This was vehemently opposed by the labour brokers, dominated by ANC public representatives, who were determined to defend the “super profits” they earned from placing workers.

Irony number six: The ANC and its various allied organisations, were happy to drive the conflict between the Basotho, Zimbabweans, and local labour to extend the unrest throughout rural areas, in their attempts to present the Western Cape as being exploitative, racist, and ungovernable.

Why should anyone believe me? Go and read the primary academic research such as Ben Stanwix’s article “Minimum wages and compliance in South African agriculture” as well as a discussion document by Jan Theron (co-ordinator of the Labour and Enterprise Policy Research Group at UCT) titled “Changing employment trends on farms in the Hex and Breede River valleys” and the research paper “Violence, Labour and the Displacement of Zimbabweans in De Doorns, Western Cape” written by Jean Pierre Misago of the University of the Witwatersrand’s Forced Migration Studies Programme that contain some in-depth interviews on this matter (over and above my direct discussions with farm workers and farmers).

There is much priceless information out there if one is prepared to join the dots

The best of all of these is an article titled “Oogsten in Afrika” published in the magazine Quote in October 2012, which quotes Anton de Vries, the Dutch co-founder of the BEE consortium that took over Keurboschkloof farm (that cut worker wages as soon as they took over) saying he had set up a venture to “profit” from land reform. He boasted that it was an official partner of the ANC national government and has contacts in the highest levels, which is its greatest asset.

It is time we woke up and saw what is really happening in our platteland, instead of continuing to bow before the ANC’s warped and deliberately distorted version of events.

The reality is that while most farmers pay significantly higher than the minimum wage they are struggling to make ends meet because of the low return on their product. For example, a “Capturing Gains” research project revealed that when it comes to the final retail price for table grapes from Hex River Valley imported to the United Kingdom, 42% goes to supermarkets, 32% to distributors, while only 18% is retained by the farmers, who must cover all their costs from this return.

Instead, of falling prey to the ANC’s ‘divide-and-rule’ tactics, farmers, farm workers, civil society and government need to work together to address this highly distorted value chain and increase profitability on farms so that the individuals putting in the hard work start reaping the benefits.

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